The End of My Story-The Beginning of Ours

Over the next couple of years, I taught myself to play guitar. I got a little 3/4 classical that cost twenty dollars at a pawn shop, and learned simple chords and chord progressions, and wrote dozens of songs. I played that little guitar so much that I wore deep grooves in the fingerboard until I wasnt able to use it any anymore.

 

I opened up my heart and wrote my feelings and sang them over and over and over. I dreamed of becoming a famous musician/singer/songwriter, and using the money I would earn to create a place in the mountains, where others like myself could come, to learn to express their feelings and heal through music.

 

I saw myself at award shows, accepting awards for my accomplishments, and rubbing elbows with the biggest names in the music industry. I sought ways to get my music out there, to be heard and appreciated. Everyone who heard my music was moved by it, but getting the "right" people to hear it was the problem.

 

I entered a charity/benefit, talent/gong show, and played my guitar and sang one of my songs. It was my first and only experience on a stage in front of a crowd. I had no idea how scary it would be, and I knew absolutely nothing about accoustics, or singing into a microphone with amps.

 

I had to have two microphones, one for my guitar and one to sing into, and once I started playing and singing, I could hear my voice and music coming out of the speakers and echoing in the Hall. It completely threw off my timing and rhythm, and I was scared and shaking like a leaf. I somehow managed to get through it without messing up too badly, but it was a horrible experience and I expected to get gonged at any moment.

 

I didnt get gonged, thank God, but it was a miserable performance compared to what I was used to when singing alone or for a few friends. I actually won second place, but it was a miserable failure to me. My self esteem was always a problem, and I couldnt bring myself to relive that experience again. So I put away my guitar and my dreams, and went back to my life of seeking.

 

I became an ordained minister, and a Reiki Master, and hiked the Appalachian mountains, fasting and meditating, healing and being healed. Seeking the meaning of life. Examining my beliefs and formulating new ones as the old became limiting instead of uplifting. I found that life has no meaning, except the meaning you give it.

 

I experienced visions and revelations, Archangels and Ascended Masters, and people, average and ordinary, profane and profound, all sent to me to teach me and show me the true nature of my being.

 

But, still, everywhere I went, I ran into reminders of my dreams. All through my journeys I kept meeting musicians. No matter how poor or destitute the mountain people I met were, they almost always had musical instruments, and were proficient at playing and singing, and experiencing the joys of music.

 

I once ran into a couple, who happened to be brother and sister. One of the most seemingly profane examples of the human condition. They were crack addicts who had used and abused their bodies until they looked like death itself. I met them in a pawn shop where I was looking at the guitars for sale there.

 

I took one of the guitars, and played and sang one of my songs for them. It was a song I wrote for Julie, called "That's Not What Daddy's Do". After I finished the song, the woman took the guitar from me and began playing. They both sang a song that they had written, and it was one of the most beautiful and most profound experiences of my life.

 

Before my very eyes, these two wretched human beings transformed into the most beautiful of angels, and showed me and taught me the complete and utter folly of judging according to outward appearance. That was a lesson I resolve never to forget.

 

Music can be a miraculous tool for transformation and healing, and the great thing about it is, you dont have to be musically inclined to use it. You dont have to be able to write, play, or sing

music in order to experience the wonder of it. Mother/Father/God/Goddess/Source, whatever you choose to call yourself (your true self), has sent us nothing but angels (we call them musicians, artists, poets, photographers, etc. and yes, drug addicts too), to sing to us, and to tell us, and show us, and teach us of the beauty and power and magnificence of our true being.

 

Here is just one example of the angelic wonder and and beauty that Source has sent us. Anyone who has heard this man sing cannot doubt that this is the voice of an angel. I often listen to this and sing it to My God and imagine that He is also singing it to me (and of course He is).  

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JYJwTAYNzxM

 

Try it and see if it doesnt make you feel love and appreciation for yourself and your God. Your true self.

 

It doesnt matter what path to God you are on, or what your beliefs are, they all lead to the same conclusion. You Are The God That You Are Seeking. This is what I have learned through all my pain and joy. I was seeking something other than myself because I didnt love and appreciate myself.

 

My belief system happens to be Christ Consciousness. I once threw away all my beliefs in God and Christ because I rebelled against the manipulation, and control, and indoctrination of organized religion. I threw out the baby with the bath water, as it were, and had to start seeking all over again, only to find that I was that baby that I threw out.

 

The concept of Christ, and the Holy Spirit, works for me, mainly because I am part of the soul group who came here with Jesus to help and support him in his mission to show us to ourselves. I use the terms and teachings that resonate with me, and they may not resonate with you, and that is perfectly ok. That is why I always stipulate that everything I say may be wrong, and mine is not the only way.

 

But dont make the same mistake I made and throw out all of your beliefs, but use them while they uplift you, and when they become limiting, examine them and re-interpret them so that they are uplifting once more. I will tell you what I have learned and you may use it or not, as you see fit.

 

You are not this illusion that thinks it is experiencing turmoil, or chaos. Thought is everything. As you think, so you are. Choose peace in every moment, and it will be your experience no matter what is going on around you. Choose Love in every moment, and it will be your experience, no matter what is happening to the little you. That is the lesson of the crucifixion, the crucifixion is not what is real, the ressurection is the truth, everything else is illusion.
 

 You are NOT human!!! You are God experiencing and expressing your human-ness. So long as we believe in our limitations we will limit ourselves. We have forgotten who we are so we could come here and experience all this as real until we grow into the remembering of who we really are (God). We grow to re-member with the Body of God. We are here to experience the Joy of Re-Membering. We are magnificent, powerful beings, and we must learn to love and appreciate ourselves as such.

 
This is why we are learning gratitude. God does not need our gratitude, but WE need to re-develop our ability to be grateful, in order to be able to appreciate God, and ourselves as part of God. God does not need our appreciation, we do. You cannot Love what you do not appreciate, and our fear of our own magnificence makes appreciation impossible.

You are already capable of manifesting your dreams. You have been blessed with many wonderful gifts, although they may not have been experienced as such, be grateful for them and fear them not. All God abilities are already yours and are just waiting for you to re-member them.

Put away your fears that you may not be good enough, you are an all powerful, all seeing, all hearing, all knowing, all loving, child of God.

Use what powers you have available to you now, and love and appreciate yourself and the others will develop within you.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things will be added unto you. The Kingdom is within you. The Kingdom IS you!!! 

 Yes, I know I need to practice what I preach, but in truth I am not preaching. I am teaching that which I most need to learn, and what better way to learn something than teach it. And if we all learn it together, what could be more wonderful or fulfilling than all of us, teaching and learning, and rising together in the realization of the One that we are. 

I here and now resolve to Live my dreams, walk my talk, and sing my songs. No longer will I fail to appreciate and Love myself. I further resolve to expand my definition of myself to include you, all my brothers and sisters of the Kingdom, for it is my dream that we all be healed, and move into the experience of Love and Joy, and step forth together into an infinitely wonderful universe of Love and Light.

 

Namaste'

Russ 

 

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Love and Light Always and All Ways